Boulder's Tom Wasinger looks to bring home another Grammy

Sunday night, millions of Americans will watch the 51st Grammy awards on CBS. Boulder-based musician and record producer Tom Wasinger won't be one of them.

He'll be attending the ceremony in Los Angeles, along with his teenage son, looking to collect his third Grammy.

"The first time you get a record nominated is thrilling," says Wasinger, 52. "Winning the second was just icing on the cake. If I win a third it will be further icing."

The Grammys start at 6 p.m. Sunday on CBS. The four-hour awards presentation prior to the TV broadcast, including Wasinger's portion, is available as a live stream online at www.grammy.com.

Wasinger was first nominated for a Grammy in 2000 for producing Joanne Shenandoah's Peacemaker's Journey, released on Boulder-based Silver Wave Records. He won his first Grammy in 2003 for Mary Youngblood's Beneath the Raven Moon, and garnered his second in 2007 for Youngblood's Dance with the Wind. Another Youngblood collaboration was nominated in 2005.

This year, Wasinger is up for the Best Native American Music Album award for his collection Come To Me Great Mystery.

"Specifically the intent of the songs was for healing. The songs themselves are Native American in origin, mostly traditional," Wasinger says of the album.

Advertisement

The album features vocal performances from many Native American artists, including Thirza Defoe, Doug Foote and Lorain Fox, and it hearkens back to Wasinger's early work, when he started producing musical collections for Silver Wave in the early '90s.

But his connection with Boulder and Silver Wave dates back more than three decades, when a teenage Wasinger moved to Fort Collins in 1974.

Set in stone

Wasinger was born and raised in Oklahoma but relocated to Colorado after high school.

"It was a much more compelling and interesting place than Oklahoma City," he says.

He first moved to Fort Collins and put together a band, Kid Shalien, which garnered regional notice for touring Wyoming, South Dakota and Colorado ski towns.

"That band was quite successful at the time, at least in terms of making a living," Wasinger says. "We were never really a recording act, but we did well in clubs."

In 1979, the band parted ways, and Wasinger moved south to Boulder.

"I decided to move to Boulder because there was much more going on there musically," Wasinger says. "Boulder was a much different town then. It was pretty charming but quite small. When the students would leave in the spring the town became very small."

In the early 1980s, he fronted a punk/new wave band, Teenage Tom and the Metro Gnomes.

"I've always had a baby face, so that's where Teenage Tom came from," he says, noting that the band's music was quite diverse for the time.

"There was some influence from jazz fusion," he says. "It was kind of like new wave-punk-fusion."

Throughout the decade, Wasinger's musical horizons broadened, and his evolution from entertainer to Grammy-winning producer progressed.

"I was never the kind of person to be content to sit still and do one thing," he says. "As time went on, I was interested in exploring and pushing the frontiers of what could be done in music and the world of sound.

"I loved this notion of trying unusual things, which is what led me to build instruments out of resonating stone," he adds.

He's not kidding. In the early '90s, Wasinger founded the Lost Angel Stone Ensemble, which made music with instruments made from resonating stone, including a basenite marimba and a slate kick drum. The stone orchestra released an album, Rock Music, and toured with its hard rock instruments.

His breakthrough came in 1993, when he and his wife, Susan, came up with the idea to record an album of international lullabies. To begin work on the project, Wasinger didn't have to travel far.

"Boulder was a great community to be in in those years, and probably still is, because we had NCAR, which brought in researchers from all over the world," he says. "I would go to these people at these parties and ask them if they could sing a lullaby from their country."

But the bulk of the project involved the Wasingers traveling around the world with a portable recording device in search of faraway tunes.

"After I had collected maybe 20 of them or so, I started working in the studio and producing them," Wasinger says. "I would edit them and (add) instruments. If it was a musical culture I was not so familiar with, I would go and study the music of that culture. If I was going to add anything, I wanted to make sure it was indigenous to that culture."

When the record -- cleverly dubbed The World Sings Goodnight -- was finished, Wasinger went shopping for a label. He didn't have to go very far for a deal.

"I finally wound up signing with Silver Wave right here in town," he says. "I just felt like I would have a better relationship with them."

He was right. Following an interview on National Public Radio, the album became a hit (and would spawn a sequel). James Marienthal, founder of Silver Wave, admits he was somewhat surprised by the album's success.

"It was a fantastic idea, but I thought it was going to be a specialty product," Marienthal says. "As it turned out, he did such a great job with it, and it was so unique, that it got an incredible amount of publicity on (NPR) and some newspapers. This incredible buzz started around it for several years."

His initial expectation for the album was to sell a few thousand. It ended up selling tens of thousands.

"It became one of our best-selling projects over the years, something that was meant to be just a labor of love," he says.

Team player

Wasinger and Marienthal first met through mutual friends in 1979, and the duo has worked together for nearly two decades. Silver Wave is an independent record label specializing in Native American, new age and world music. Wasinger has produced more than a dozen albums released by Silver Wave, including all five of his Grammy-nominated records. (Silver Wave has compiled nine Grammy nominations total.)

Marienthal says there are various reasons why Wasinger has been so successful.

"One would be his dedication to perfection," he says. "He spends countless hours working on the projects that he gets involved in. He has his own studio and just puts his all into everything. He'll spend as much time as it takes to get it just right. He's got an incredible ear and a great sense for arrangement.

"The other thing is that he's really unique," Marienthal adds. "He's definitely one of a kind. He's got a palette of sounds that he works with that's unlike anybody else out there. He uses all different kinds of instruments from all over the world and creates exotic sounds from them, and he uses them very tastefully. He's not just being exotic or different for the sake of being different. He makes it fit very well."

He cites the first project they did with Native American flutist Mary Youngblood, 1999's Heart of the World, as an example.

"The first album that we did with her, Tom and I traveled together out to northern California to meet her at a place called Moaning Cavern. It's an underground cavern about 200 feet deep," Marienthal says. "The challenge of recording in this underground cavern was very unique.

"That was the beginning of Mary's career, which has been very successful," he adds.

Wasinger and Youngblood have worked together on five records, which have netted two Grammy wins, another Grammy nomination, three Native American Music Awards and two Indie Awards.

The flutist says the two make a good team.

"The artist and the producer have to be team players," Youngblood says. "When you work with someone with a like mind like Tom, he completes the team. I was blessed that I was affiliated with Silver Wave Records and introduced to him.

"He has a sensibility and a sensitivity to an artist and their needs," she adds.

His musical abilities also bring a lot to the studio.

"His versatility as a musician. Not only is he a good producer, but he's a wonderful accompanist," says Youngblood, whom Wasinger refers to as One-Take Mary. "He plays so many instruments, he's kind of like a one-man band. And he's a nice guy. He's easy to work with."

Family affair

Of course, Wasinger is hoping to bring home some more hardware tonight, but he's keeping everything in perspective.

"Anyone who does this work wants to be recognized," he says. "Obviously to win a Grammy is that much more pleasing. But at the same time, it doesn't change your life all that much."

It helps with getting work, he says, but otherwise Wasinger is more focused on upcoming projects than those in the past.

He keeps his previous Grammy Awards in his home studio, Subterranean Recording, on Sugarloaf Mountain. He lives there with his two teenage children and his wife, Susan, to whom he's been married for 20 years.

"She was one of my guitar students many, many years ago. We didn't last very long as student and teacher," Wasinger says with a laugh.

Susan is a vocalist, and as a duo they have collaborated on the albums Angels in the Wilderness and the critically acclaimed Many Moons.

Wasinger describes the music as ambient folk.

"The music I've done with her is more mainstream," he says.

Susan has also been heavily involved in his various projects as a performer and in the conceptual stage.

"Many of these ideas for records over the years, like the lullaby compilation, are ideas that we had together," he says.

Same goes for the new record, Come to Me Great Mystery, which is something the two of them came up with over dinner. It's an idea that has gone from dinner discussion to the studio to tonight's Grammy Awards.

Wasinger is very proud of this effort, not so much for himself, he says, as for the performances on the disc.

"This is a record that deserves recognition," he says.

Marienthal agrees.

"It's another creative, unique idea that he had a couple of years ago," he says. "He came up with this idea to do these healing songs. It was really more about finding the right songs, not necessarily getting the most popular artists to do them, but finding some interesting songs that really fit this idea of healing songs.

"It's worthy of the Grammy nomination," he adds. "Tom, for all the work that he's done over the years, is certainly deserving to win the award if he's so fortunate to do so."

But for Marienthal, the value of working with Wasinger isn't measured in awards.

"He's been a great person to work with over the years. I've appreciated our friendship. It definitely goes beyond our working relationship," Marienthal says. "We have a great time hanging out at a party or going mountain biking or things like that. What he's done for Silver Wave over the years has been invaluable to the company and an invaluable experience to work with him. I wish him all the best and hope he gets a winner on Sunday."

Archived comments

Tom is one of the most innovative, creative musicians ever to call Boulder home. Here's hoping you bring home a third, Tom.

Patrick

pcullie@leopard.com

2/7/2009 7:06:30 AM

Heartfelt wishes for Tom's ongoing success. He's a great guy, and a great artist.

eprcrowder@aol.com

2/7/2009 2:07:14 PM

I am so glad the Grammy's have categories like "best sousaphone performance by a female artist"

Boulder's Joey Airola wins in 106s at the Pepsi CenterThe nerves of steel for Boulder freshman Joey Airola didn't match the surroundings, let alone his circumstance. This state wrestling debut was a calm and collected masterpiece. Full Story

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story